Electronic component insertion machines are well known in the art and are designed to automatically insert discrete electronic components into printed circuit boards (PC boards). A typical insertion machine has a table which is movable along the x and y axes. One or more PC boards are positioned on the table and the table is then moved to position a selected portion of a PC board under an insertion head which inserts a predetermined electronic component into the board. The insertion head obtains the electronic component from one of a plurality of component magazines which usually are mounted on the frame of the machine alongside the movable table. A typical component magazine is a U-shaped container open at both ends to permit components to be inserted at one end and to be extracted at the other end.
In a typical component magazine mounting arrangement, six magazine mounting slots are available; however, because of the different magazine sizes (width of the magazines required to accommodate electronic components) usually only three or four magazines are secured to a mounting plate, which in turn is bolted to the machine frame. To change to a different size magazine or to position a magazine in a different mounting slot, the mounting plate first has to be unbolted from the machine frame before the magazine can be removed from the mounting plate. To accomplish this, the insertion machine has to be shut down, and servies of a setup man are usually required. When many small production lots are scheduled to be processed on such a component insertion machine, typically it may require many magazine changes to accmmmodate various types and sizes of electronic components and the machine down time may become quite extensive.
To reduce the machine down time and to eliminate the need for a setup man to effect the change of magazines, a new mounting arrangement has been developed which does not require removal of the mounting plate from the machine frame in order to remove one magazine and exchange it with another.